IMO bad take. We want quality journalism to be sustainable, having AI launder stolen content and make it free with ads is not better.
Probably mostly a good thing now that I think about it - it moves the paper closer to the model of 20th century journalism (a local quasi-monopoly on news gathering and distribution funded by advertising) that was, for all its faults, pretty fucking good in retrospect.
Also, this is the NYT we're talking about here, the outfit that promoted the fiction about "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq and doxxed Scott Alexander while insinuating he was a Nazi. It's not a good choice for a poster child for "quality journalism".